re: Subway switching from Coke to Pepsi…

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Scores? You just carry around sodas and cups for ad hoc tests?

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Nah.

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Maybe people that don’t drink it wouldn’t know the difference, but people that drink it often clearly would know. Pepsi products taste nothing like their Coke counterpart. You can get tricky I guess with foreign versions that use real sugars or different sweeteners.

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I'm well aware of the fact that most people believe this - and stridently. My experience with testing the premise is that they are very very wrong.

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I’m actually in marketing and did a taste test on Coke, Pepsi and Sam’s Choice. This wasn’t a test to identify the brand, but for people to pick their favorite. Sam’s won by a landslide… but even that is a flavor I don’t care for.

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I like a version of what they call the "triangle test" - not just a simple binary. I put 10 in a row and see if people can label them. The funniest is when you just put all one or the other. Literally, nobody ever detected that.

If we're being the fairest, here is how I would describe it: some people show a limited ability to tell the difference in a straight up binary test (50/50, so I don't love the sturdiness of the result). However, introduce any kind of real world factor - like multiple sips/mixed in drinks/food in between/etc. and people just cannot tell.

And also the "I HATE the other one!" just does not hold up. I have NEVER seen anyone just confidently go through and label. They always linger and swish and think and then go back to the other one. I think most soda taste preference is actually minor and has to do with non-taste factors instead.